Letter to the Editor

To the Editor:

Well Easter has come and gone. Like my children before them, some of my grandchildren have become sick from gorging on too much of the Easter Bunny's candy again this year year. This sad but entirely predictable occurrence brought to mind the recent tax increase that was overwhelmingly passed, nearly three to one I think, by the rather small fraction of the eligible electorate who bothered to vote in the recent elections.

Just like Easter candy, new seemingly delicious tax spending to build enhanced swimming facilities and a separate scheme that commits us to buy and maintain a golf course (without a club house operation) in a time of dangerously expanding public debt at all levels of government will most certainly make us sick at tax time. The history of profitability of the course over the decades should not be comforting to all those taxpayers who will eventually be asked to pay the workers hired to maintain it and pay the bills of revenue shortfall as they come due.

We in this country are deep in peril at this very moment. Our federal government's exponentially accelerating debt and the subsequent printing of paper money backed by smoke and our elected politicians' deceptivepromises, is debasing the dollar, i.e., making our savings and retirement income worth less -- much less -- and causing many of us to become more and more a slave to debt that we have very little say in making.

Most I hope would agree that Washington spending is out of control and risks our very future as a free and independent nation.

The great irony is that we can and must control local spending, if we would just get off our duffs and get to the ballot box every time those who have great enthusiasm for spending our money on their pet projects want us to pony up.

For all of us who are tempted by the fuzzy bunny's pretty candy, I suggest we tell him "no thanks" the next time he passes the basket.

Remember, we the private citizens, who always ultimately get stuck with the bill, have by far our most electoral clout on the local level if we'll only have the courage and will to use it.

Happy Easter to all.

Thank you for your consideration,

Gerald Kerr

Fort Scott